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Chicago Lawyer
FAMILY HISTORY REFLECTS 100 YEARS OF POLITICS AND LAW
By Jaime Levy
In 1906, 6-year-old Arthur Exelrod arrived from Russia with his older brother and his father Ben. The three settled on Chicago's near West Side, with Ben Exelrod setting up a tailor's business and eventually sending for his wife and their two other sons. Nearly 100 years later, Arthur Exelrod's family -- now known as the Elrods -- have risen, literally, to the heights of Chicago's legal community. On the 25th floor of the Daley Center, his son Richard presides over his courtroom in the law division of the Cook County Circuit Court. And the office of his grandson Steven Elrod, the managing partner of Holland & Knight's Chicago office, looks over the sparkling waters of Lake Michigan from the 31st floor of the Bank One Center.
The arc of their family's story may not be rare: An immigrant comes to America and makes a better life for his children. But the Elrods' story also parallels in some ways Chicago's political and legal history. Three generations embraced politics, civil service and the law as a way to rise up. The path led from ward-level organizing to elected office and, finally, to the power, wealth and sophistication that comes with leadership of one of the nation's largest law firms.
"I think the practice of law and government are intertwined," Steven Elrod said. "I do think there is a love of government in my family. I think there's a love of the art of politics, of the study of politics. -- There is that common thread."
Back in the day
In the 1920s, Chicago's West Side was home to a working-class majority of Eastern European Jews. While German-Jewish communities prospered in affluent Evanston and Hyde Park, the 24th ward's residents relied in part on government aid to survive through the Depression and World War II, said political historian Paul M. Green, director of Roosevelt University's policy studies department.
Sometime after graduating from Medill High School, Arthur Exelrod decided to shorten his last name, becoming Arthur X. Elrod. The new high school graduate began clerking for Jacob Arvey, a local lawyer who served as alderman for the 24th ward. Elrod soon became a precinct captain. When Arvey became chair of Cook County's Finance Committee in the mid-1930s, he made Elrod his secretary.
Arthur Elrod's interest in politics was more pragmatic than passionate, his son said.
"At that time, politics was an avenue to upward mobility," Richard Elrod said. "In the height of the Depression, one area where you know you're going to have a job is in government. You had to have the garbage picked up. You had to have the streets cleaned. You had to have police protection."
Arthur Elrod had become attached to a kingmaker. Under Arvey's leadership, the 24th ward in the area around Maxwell Street was tightly organized, with precinct captains keeping in close touch with residents to make sure city services ran smoothly as a way to ensure votes. The ward became a "vote treasure chest for Democrats" in the 1930s and 1940s, Green said. Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman won tight elections, in part due to the 24th ward's pull.
"The 24th ward that Elrod and Arvey organized became the bell-weather Democratic ward -- not even in the state of Illinois -- for the country," said Seymour Simon, a former Illinois Supreme Court justice and Cook County board president who is now a partner at Piper Rudnick.
When Arvey went to serve in World War II, he named Elrod to be his successor as ward committeeman.
"You don't volunteer; you're picked," Green said of ward politics during that era. "It is raw capitalism, but instead of economics, it's politics. If you don't deliver the votes, you don't get picked for the team."
Arthur Elrod had delivered the votes.
In Boss, the book about the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, author Mike Royko described Elrod as "a classic ward boss." Elrod had made money as a real-estate investor and insurance broker, and he'd developed a reputation as someone who enjoyed the fast life. He hung out at nightclubs and hobnobbed with movie stars. Richard Elrod remembered sitting with Bob Hope at Wrigley Field and going with his father to pick up a young Frank Sinatra, who visited Arthur Elrod's office before performing in Chicago.
But Arthur Elrod's exciting friendships didn't take away from his hard work, his son said.
"He worked every day of the week," Richard Elrod said. "He knew what it was to work hard, -- and he expected that from the people he surrounded himself with."
Richard Elrod remembered seeing his father at ward headquarters: His father would always praise those who produced results at the polls and wasn't afraid to punish those who didn't. In those days, Richard Elrod said, precinct captains who didn't do their jobs were "viced" -- they'd lose their government jobs.
Arthur Elrod used to have his secretary conduct polls of precinct residents to make sure the captains were staying in touch, his son said. One day, Richard Elrod said, he called in a precinct captain to tell him he was going to have him viced.
"He said, 'Artie, why are you doing that? I haven't done anything!' " Richard Elrod recalled. Arthur responded, "That's exactly right."
In 1945, Elrod filled a vacant position on the Cook County Board of Commissioners.
"Despite the fact that he moved out of the ward to an apartment on Lake Shore Drive, he continued to get elected and re-elected, over and over again," Steven Elrod said.
One day in 1959, Arthur Elrod played gin rummy with friends at the Covenant Club, a downtown athletic and dining club for Jewish men. When he said goodbye to his son, who was also there, he mentioned that he'd been dealt a perfect hand.
Later that night, he died of a heart attack. He was 58.
The judge
As Arthur Elrod climbed the ranks through ward politics, his son was taking a different route to the top: education.
Described by Royko as "a model of Machine upward mobility," Richard Elrod always figured he'd be a lawyer; he never considered any other career. At Northwestern University, he was a starting guard and linebacker for the school's football team. By his junior year, though, his grades were sagging, so he quit football to spend more time on his studies and with Marilyn Mann, who would become his wife.
While he was a senior at Northwestern, he clerked for the state's attorney's office. He graduated from Northwestern's School of Law in 1958 and took a job as assistant corporation counsel for the City of Chicago.
Richard Elrod is quick to point out that he never benefited directly from his father's political prowess: Arthur Elrod died while Richard Elrod's political career was still in its infancy.
But he did follow his father's general political vector: He became a precinct captain of the 50th ward on the far North Side and was elected president of the Young Democrats of Cook County in 1959. By 1965, he'd become the chief city prosecutor, and he won a seat as a state representative in 1968, after unsuccessfully running for 50th ward alderman in 1967.
"He was bright and burly and ambitious," Green of Roosevelt University said. "You don't get very far in the city without being ambitious."
By the late 1960s, Richard Elrod had established himself as a "law and order" figure in Chicago during a time of great turmoil.
In 1968, the Democratic National Convention brought with it riots and protests that rocked the city. As chief prosecutor, Richard Elrod walked the streets with police, advising police and protestors of their rights. Usually, Elrod said, protestors demonstrated peacefully, wanting only to get their point across.
That was not the case in October 1969, when the Chicago 8 trial sparked the "Days of Rage" protests led by the Weatherman Underground, a violent faction of Students for a Democratic Society that the FBI later described as "greasers and assorted oddments who had displayed their hatred of authority in direct combat with police."
The Weathermen had planned a parade for October 11, 1969. The protesters began their march on Randolph Street and continued along LaSalle. When they reached Madison, Elrod said, "they broke."
While the protesters vandalized the city and fought with police, Elrod was at Randolph and Dearborn being interviewed by a radio reporter. He heard of the chaos over his walkie-talkie, looked up and saw a man running down the street, with people yelling to stop him.
Elrod recalled dropping his walkie-talkie and saying "excuse me" to the reporter before tackling the man.
He later said that the man kicked him in the neck while he was down; other reports said that when Elrod tried to tackle the man, he missed and hit the ground hard. However it happened, Elrod, then 35, broke his neck and was paralyzed.
"For weeks, the papers carried almost daily reports on his medical progress, disc jockeys eulogized him," Royko wrote in Boss. "Elrod became a symbol of all that was brave and good in Chicago."
Circuit Court Judge Edward Burr, a longtime friend, visited Elrod in the hospital almost daily. One day, Burr recalled, he saw Elrod brush his nose -- maybe to scratch an itch. It was the first time Burr had seen him move since the incident.
"I said, 'How long have you been able to do that?' " Burr said. "He said, 'My whole life, except these last few weeks.' "
Mayor Richard J. Daley was also a regular visitor at the hospital. At the time, Elrod had been thinking of running for state senate. Daley presented another option: He asked if Elrod would run for sheriff. Once the doctors cleared the decision, Elrod agreed.
"In retrospect, it was probably the best therapy I could have," Elrod said. "I couldn't sit around sucking my thumb."
He won the election in November 1970. Almost immediately, a controversy arose that showed just how much politics had changed since Arthur Elrod "viced" ineffective precinct captains in the 1940s and 1950s: Several employees sued Elrod for firing them for political reasons when he took office.
Up until then, it had been common practice for a newly elected politician to clean house when he took office, getting rid of those who didn't support the winning candidate.
The case Elrod v. Burns went to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Justice William Brennan Jr. wrote in the 1976 majority opinion that "patronage dismissals severely restrict political belief and association."
Elrod was voted out of the sheriff's office in 1986 and served for two years as senior assistant attorney general. He was appointed as a circuit court judge in 1988, and ran for election as circuit judge in 1990. He was still linked in ways to the old school of politics: During the election, the Chicago Council of Lawyers rated him "not qualified" because of his performance as sheriff, noting in its evaluation that "Elrod presided over a deeply entrenched system of patronage and corruption."
Still, the same evaluation acknowledged that "lawyers report that Judge Elrod has demonstrated diligence and skill in bringing cases to equitable settlement."
Elrod said he thought it was "ridiculous" for the Council of Lawyers to rate him based on his performance as sheriff, instead of considering his performance as a judge.
"You judge a person for the office they're seeking to retain," he said. "That they didn't like the patronage politics of the sheriff's office had no bearing on my ability to be a judge."
Elrod won the election and has been retained since; he pointed out that in the 2002 election, the Council of Lawyers rated him "highly qualified." Now 70, he doesn't plan to retire anytime soon: "I enjoy what I'm doing, so I can't think of anything better to do," he said.
Big law
Steven M. Elrod followed his father into the field of law and government, but he didn't take on the aspects of political life that didn't enamor him.
Marilyn Elrod recalled consoling her son after Richard Elrod lost his campaign for 50th ward alderman. "It was very hard for a 10-year-old," she said.
Even harder than the political loss, though, was seeing his father physically hurt -- and to have it happen in the public eye. Steven Elrod, who was 12 at the time, remembered his house swarming with police and news crews. He recalled taking phone calls from around the world.
"It was difficult not to get caught up in the excitement of the event. It was also very scary," he said. "I think I grew up a whole lot quicker than my peers."
Steven Elrod knew he wouldn't take a political route, but his father's career as a lawyer inspired him. He graduated from Northwestern with a law degree in 1982. Just as Richard Elrod sought to build a career without depending on his father's connections, Steven looked for a job that was in no way related to his dad's role as sheriff, he said.
"I enjoyed the privacy, the stability and the lifestyle that being part of a professional organization afforded me," said Steven Elrod, adding that he enjoyed the business aspects of working at a law firm. "I got married early, had children early. I didn't have the financial luxury to explore -- less lucrative means of practicing law."
Steven Elrod began his career at Ross & Hardies and became involved in the firm's small land-use practice. A year later, in 1984, he joined 22 other attorneys in starting a new firm, Burke, Bosselman & Weaver. At the time, the schism was the largest law firm spin-off in Chicago's history, and the new firm took several of its parent firm's municipal clients. Elrod found that he loved taking on land-use and zoning issues -- the constitutional aspects, especially, appealed to him, he said.
Without meaning for it to happen, Steven Elrod ended up in a similar position to the one in which his father began his career: He became the town lawyer for Highland Park (where he lives), Northbrook and other Chicago suburbs.
Steven Elrod said he has the best of both worlds -- he gets to participate in government at some level, but without the publicity and risk that comes with being an elected official.
Mark Damisch, a lawyer who is also Northbrook's village president, has worked with Steven Elrod and appeared before Richard Elrod. He said they share an important quality: "They both live up to Rudyard Kipling's saying: They keep their heads when people all around them are losing theirs," he said. "These two men are just unflappable."
As a leader at 40-lawyer Burke, Weaver & Prell (the spinoff firm's successor), Steven Elrod managed the smaller firm's absorption by Florida-based Holland & Knight in 2000. Three years later, he was made executive partner in Holland & Knight's Chicago office, and he oversaw the firm's move into a new space at the Bank One Center on South Dearborn.
"It was natural for Steve to continue to be a leader in Holland & Knight. The issue was never how long he had been with the firm. He came into the firm with seniority and he has continued to earn it," said Martha Barnett, the chair of Holland & Knight's director's committee. "Steve is most certainly ambitious and has the potential to one day lead the firm."
Regarding his family's climb to the top, Steven Elrod said: "It's a positive progress that we've experienced over the generations in our family. We've each built on a positive trait or characteristic, or even a positive experience that our father had, and used it in different ways and to various levels of success."
The nature of that success is different, he added.
"If you were looking at it purely from the perspective of influence in the city of Chicago, my grandfather had more influence than my father or I do put together," Steven Elrod continued. "In terms of name recognition, my father had the most. -- Anywhere I go people recognize the name 'Elrod.' If you look at economic success, perhaps I'm the one at the top of the comparison table, or in recognition outside Illinois. It depends on what's important to whom."
Both Steven and Richard Elrod see themselves as at the top of the law profession -- the father as a judge and son as a top law-firm partner.
"I would never want to be a judge," Steven Elrod said, "and my dad would never want to be a member, much less a manager, of a law firm."
Richard Elrod has saved more than a dozen notes from lawyers, interns and jurors thanking him for their good experiences working with him. That, he said, is part of the appeal of being a judge.
"To me, it's the epitome of the legal profession," he said. "If a problem can't be worked out amicably, the only alternative is to have litigation and have someone, some person, decide who's right and wrong. That's how civilized people settle disputes. Otherwise we'd have anarchy, tyranny -- rule of the might, not rule of the right."
Nearly 100 years after Arthur Exelrod stepped off a boat from Russia, his family continues the tradition he started as a political organizer in the 24th ward. As for a family legacy, Richard Elrod said: "I just hope it's a legacy of good government and a legacy of good legal service to the community. I know it is with my son, and I'm glad I could pass that legacy on."
